Painted Hearts on Crumbling Walls
by SpocksEyebrows
Summary: We'll paint our hearts, side by side, on these tumbling walls. By day we'll stand and admire our work. By night we'll sit separate and wonder where things went wrong. Maybe somewhere we'll learn that all we need is a little cement to patch things up. But right now bricks keep falling and metal keeps rusting and we don't know how to fix it.


"Rosie, don't forget to be back at your curfew," my mum reminded me, I think she felt she had to when I was two minutes late the other day, "preferably a few minutes early too." She raised an eyebrow, as if challenging me to be back on time.

"Yeah, mum, I will," probably a lie, "Iveta and I are just going to that diner in town, okay?" A definite lie. Not the part about Iveta, she was my friend. My best friend in fact, but we weren't going to the diner in town. Iveta and I were going down to The Joint. It was some muggle place south of our town.

Apparently it had been a junkyard but ten years ago, the owners abandoned it and the city didn't want to deal with it, so here it was being used as a creative outlet by teens all around the area. To put it simply, it was a graffiti park. The dusty old buses that littered the cracking pavement were covered in spray-painted symbols and designs. Iveta and I had found the place last year on Easter Break and thank Merlin we did. We had both been freaking over our upcoming OWLs that year and, somehow, spray-painting old cars helped a lot.

"Well, okay, just make sure you're prepared if anything bad happens." Mum worried over simple things like this a lot, I guess it was part of growing up when she did so I can't really blame her. It's not too much of a big deal, she doesn't fret as much when Hugo and I are away at Hogwarts. She's knows we're safe with McGonagall looking over us.

"Yeah, I know, wands at the ready." I made a show of putting my wand into my winter boots so she'd know I had it.

"Alright, well, have a good time, Rosie," she said and smiled at me, albeit a little tight and I knew she was still worrying. Mum was strong, we all knew that, but the War had shown her things she shouldn't have seen and being worried was just an after-effect. I knew that after I was out she'd be fine, Dad always said she settled down later. I think it was just the saying goodbye that hit her hard.

I smiled back and disapparated to an alley right by The Joint. This was where Iveta and I found it safest to apparate too, it was dark but not too dark and it wasn't too far away from The Joint either. Apparition had been legalized for fourth years and up a couple years ago. It had actually been Mum's doing. She'd made a good argument to the Minister about how, when properly trained, apparition really is the safest option of travel for young witches and wizards plus it's good if they get in a sticky situation. Honestly, I think she was just remembering Dad's little flying car incident their second year and she didn't want her kids finding some risky way of travel.

Sure enough, Iveta was there in the alley waiting for me. "Got hung up by your Mum again, Rosie?" she asked, a smirk on her face. Iveta had dark brown hair that hung straight at her shoulders. Iveta was rather wispy looking, she was pretty and moved like she was part of the air. To put it simply, she was graceful in looks and poise. Her full name was Iveta Kubic and she'd moved here the summer before second year from the Czech Republic. Her parents were big on education and didn't like the wizarding school in the Czech Republic. So Iveta had learned English when she was eleven and as soon as her English was good enough, they'd moved up here. Her voice still had a slight Czech accent to it but it sounded more English now than it had when she'd first moved here.

"Oh be quiet, I bet you only got here seconds ago with the way your parents are," I shot back. Iveta liked to act like her family was more relaxed about curfews and whatnot but I knew they really weren't.

"Whatever, Rosie, let's go," she said but she had a smile on her face. We walked out of the alley and turned the corner, coming face to face with a chain-link fence. "And up we go…" Iveta murmured before started to scale the fence.

I followed quickly behind her, hoping down on the other side. The whole place was covered in paint so I was pretty sure it was impossible to find a clean spot. Usually you look for what seems to be the oldest piece and then you can work over that. Today, Iveta and I walked over to an old once-red car, now covered in a multitude of chipping colors, and observed the car-canvas. Iveta walked around the car a couple times looking for a decent spot but I'd already decided on mine from the moment we walked up. I hopped on top of the hood of the car, tucking my legs beneath me and heaving Iveta's canvas bag of spray paints up next to me.

I stared at the windshield, my mind buzzing over all the possibilities. Tonight, I was just going to let my mind paint and not worry about any errors. There were only a few measly days left before winter holiday ended and I didn't want to waste it. I pulled out the first can my hand touched, silver paint, and went to work.

Iveta walked up behind me a few moments later, or what felt like a few moments, a quick look at my watch showed it had actually been around forty-five minutes. "Wow, Rosie, someone's eager to go back, huh?"

Hearing her voice, I drew myself out of my trance and actually looked at what I'd painted. It was Hogwarts. I'd painted Hogwarts with a moon rising over it. I hadn't thought I wanted to go back so soon but thinking about it, I kinda did. Hogwarts was home away from home and as much as I loved Mum and Dad, I couldn't wait to get back. "What can I say? The place beckons me, Ives."

She just smiled before going back around the car to continue whatever she was working on. I know painting scenery isn't considered real graffiti but I'm not much good at "real graffiti". That's what Iveta does, the tagging and dramatic lettering. It's really neat, the stuff she can do, and I've tried but I just can't get the hang of it. So I paint scenery.

Iveta's voice cut through the cold, sharp and upset, "Oh, shite. Rose, you're gonna wanna get out of here." Her voice wasn't just sharp, it was quiet. She was trying not to draw attention. I went around the car to where she was sitting, her eyes hovering over the side of the car, staring at something.

I followed her gaze. No, not something. Someone. Scorpius Malfoy.

"Yeah, I second that," I whispered back, "Let's get out of here."

* * *

A/N: So yeahhhh, that's the intro I suppose. The other chapters should be longer but this has been sitting in my hard-drive for awhile waiting to be published (I've been unsure about it) but now I'm ready to write it! I'm pretty excited to write this story so updates should be fairly frequently, though you never know with homework. There might be mild smut later on and I'd like to make it clear that I am in no way a smut writer so it will be _very _mild. Hopefully that doesn't put you off the story too much, I'll try my best! I think I'll mention the scenes in this story and then make separate one-shot type things with the actual smut scenes so they're a bit more optional. Anyway, I hope you stick around, I'm excited to write this story!


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